{"id":18714,"date":"2016-06-14T08:39:06","date_gmt":"2016-06-14T12:39:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=18714"},"modified":"2016-06-14T08:39:06","modified_gmt":"2016-06-14T12:39:06","slug":"books-that-spark-empathy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=18714","title":{"rendered":"Books That Spark Empathy"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the great miracles of books is that a few marks on paper can spark lasting empathy and compassion deep in our souls. Tragedies like the Orlando massacre\u00a0have origins beyond a\u00a0simple\u00a0lack of empathy,\u00a0but I can’t help wondering if a child nourished with plenty of worthwhile books is more likely to view others with greater\u00a0tolerance and acceptance. I flip-flop between thinking that’s a naive view and knowing how powerfully books can help shape minds and hearts.
\nLet’s compile a list of our favorite books that stir empathy most beautifully. I’ll start:
\n<\/a>The Story of Ferdinand\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>by Munro Leaf \u2014 A peace-loving young bull, stung by a bee, accidentally misleads human onlookers into thinking he will be\u00a0a great fighter. In the ring, however, his gentle nature reveals itself. A striking, funny, lovely book about letting\u00a0people be who they truly are.
\n<\/a>Crow Boy<\/strong><\/em> by Taro Yashima \u2014 A painfully shy schoolboy has trouble making friends until his teacher\u00a0sees a talent no one in class has noticed before. Perhaps less\u00a0well known than some of the other books on this list, this Caldecott Honor book is\u00a0a beautiful homage to the value of looking beyond surfaces.
\n<\/a>Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress<\/strong><\/em> by Christine Baldacchino, illus. by Isabel Malenfant \u2014 A little boy loves the orange dress in his classroom’s dress-up box, and his male friends\u00a0think this means he can’t\u00a0play\u00a0astronaut with them. But\u00a0Morris\u00a0shows them that being a boy isn’t limited to such narrow definitions. A sweet, quirky book about joyful individuality.
\n<\/a>The Hundred Dresses<\/em><\/strong> by Eleanor Estes, illus. by Louis Slobodkina \u2014 A shabbily dressed girl new to school claims she has 100 dresses at home and is ridiculed by her classmates, who don’t know anything about Wanda and her life. Perhaps still the most powerful book for young readers about bullying, from the point of view of a classmate who didn’t speak up, this Newbery Honor novel\u00a0is short, memorable, and oddly gentle for a book with\u00a0so much impact.
\n<\/a>George\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>by Alex Gino \u2014 George, a\u00a0fourth-grader born a boy, has always known she is truly a girl. Inside, she is Melissa, and Melissa really wants to try out for the role of Charlotte in the class production of Charlotte’s Web.\u00a0<\/em>Most importantly, she wants her friends, her classmates, and her mother to see her authentic self. (There are also\u00a0several\u00a0wonderful books about the trans experience out there for teens: Parrotfish<\/strong><\/em><\/a> by Ellen Wittlinger, Gracefully Grayson<\/strong><\/em><\/a> by Ami Polonsky, If I Was Your Girl<\/strong><\/em><\/a> by Meredith Russo, Luna<\/strong><\/em><\/a> by Julie Ann Peters, and more.)
\n<\/i>ShelfTalker readers – what books have had the most profound impact on your own developing sense of empathy, as a child or as an adult? I’ll post a complete list with responses next week.
\nIn the meantime, my heart goes out to everyone in my great big beautiful LGBTQIA community, and those who care about us.
\nA side note: very strangely, when I was gathering titles and images for this post, my Ingram database searches didn’t bring up any of the\u00a0titles with gay or trans content. I’m not sure if there’s a glitch in their system, but someone needs to check out the database.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gathering a list of children’s books that open our eyes and hearts to other lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18714\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}